


Agency

by thesometimeswarrior



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Choices, Episode: s05e23-24 Reunited, Ficlet, Gen, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-29 09:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15726513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesometimeswarrior/pseuds/thesometimeswarrior
Summary: Pearl chose to fight. Garnet chose to be together.Hadsheever made a choice for herself?Amethyst contemplates choices and having the power to make them.





	Agency

It was nice, Amethyst thought, leaning against a table next to the dance floor. This whole wedding thing. And not just as a distraction, either. How had Steven put it? _Wonderful promises we have the power to make._

Power. That was what this all came down to, wasn’t it? Having the power to make your own choices. “Someone else told us we were the answer,” Ruby said to Sapphire. “This time, being Garnet will be our decision.” And now, seeing the newly re-formed Garnet dance herself around the beach, Amethyst thought, it was clear that she was happy with that choice.

Choices and the power to make them had been on her mind a lot in past the week or so since everything about Rose and Pink Diamond had been revealed. “So,” she had heard Sapphire ask Pearl as they sat preparing wedding invitations. “If you were Ro—I mean, Pink Diamond’s—Pearl, did she order you to fight with her against Homeworld? Is that why you stayed?”

(It seemed like an extremely personal question at the time and Sapphire—in so far as Amethyst knew her on her own at all—had never been one to pry. But whatever they discussed after Steven and Pearl disappeared on the warp pad after her must have opened the door for it, because Pearl seemed to take it in-stride, in a manner much more laid back than Amethyst would ever have expected from her.)

“No,” Pearl responded, smiling softly. “In fact, she explicitly told me that I didn’t have to. I stayed because I _wanted_ to fight for her. And maybe it’s what any good Pearl would have done anyway, but, for the first time in my existence, I _chose_ to do it. And everything I did after, as a Crystal Gem, was my choice too.”

Had _she_ ever made a choice for herself, Amethyst wondered. She’d decided to do small things, sure—join the Beach City underground wrestling league and then quit, watch _Little Butler_ with Greg, drink a soda and eat the can—but ever anything big and meaningful? When she’d first emerged from her hole, she’d been alone, and Rose and the others were the first other living things she met. She didn’t _choose_ to join them exactly; Rose offered her a place, and it simply hadn’t occurred to her to say no. Unless she wanted to remain alone at the Kindergarten, there was nowhere else for her to go. And after, she stayed on Earth and fought the corrupted Gems because that was just what they _did_. There was no other option.

Except, that wasn’t quite true anymore, was it? She'd met the Famethyst, at the Human Zoo, she’d even met other Amethysts from her _unit_ , and 8XL said: “You could, like, _stay_ with us. It’s not like Holly Blue would _notice_.”

“I can’t,” she replied. “After we save Steven and Greg, I gotta go back to Earth with the others—I’m a Crystal Gem!”

The rest of the Famethyst had shrugged and nodded—they were cool like that—but no one had asked her why. She’d never asked herself why either. The Earth, the Crystal Gems, were all she’d ever known. Was she _afraid_ to be anything else, anywhere else?

No, that wasn’t it.

When they went back to the Kindergarten, Peridot had lamented: “Life doesn’t start in a Kindergarten. It ends here. I’ve gotten used to plants everywhere. Bugs and breeze and sunshine…All of that has been sucked out of this place. It’s with the Amethysts that were produced here, and now, this place is nothing but a miserable husk. All of the Amethysts are gone.”

Something had stirred in her when she said that, and she'd protested with a half-hearted "Hey!" but hadn't really known why, a pang in her Gemstone unknowable, unidentifiable... 

_I’m not gone._

It was a sudden realization, finally being able to articulate something she's known, felt for ages now. She was _life_. Life on and of the Planet Earth, just like the plants and the bugs and the breeze and the sunshine. She was made of the same stuff as it, and it pulsed through her Gemstone like a human heartbeat. And the other Amethysts had gone—and taken that life away from the Earth with them. And it wasn’t their fault; they hadn’t had a choice. And she hadn’t originally, either. But she did now. And, she realized suddenly, slamming a glass of punch down on the table, she wanted to stay, to keep that energy here where it belonged, and to fight for the other life of this planet. 

She didn't ask to be made—from Earth or from anywhere else. But this was _hers_. Like Pearl _chose_ to fight and Garnet _chose_ to be together, Amethyst chose too:

She was _here_ , she was a Crystal Gem, and she fought for Earth.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! I adore comments!


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